Disclaimer: This series is an LGBT slow-burn fiction that contains heavy politics and sensitive themes like profane language, murder, war, cultism, fictional religions, non-consensual events, PTSD, racism, substance abuse, misogynistic undertones, a...
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"The Frozen Candle, The Blanket of Dread,The Red Crown. Such are the names bestowed to the saviour who would warm the epoch drenched in cold anguish- overmorrow..."
Clouds from the northern mountains descend the City of Dirge, covering them like a white veil on a mourner's head. The howling white cliffs, the waltz of glaciers by the sea, and the onslaught of cold tides are what wakes the dwellers in the Sovenian north. And the innocents who rise with the sun are always graced with an odd pair ever side by side, carving the snowlands to the black beaches with their looming daily eclipse:
One, a seafarer towering over everything, his youthful energy pouring through the silent pier-roads as he kicks through snow to clear a path. Ian'drah Dawnsnow, a name that wetted the lips of maidens and trembled the jaws of buccaneers. Catching fame, fishes, and enemies with his net in just a single sigh.
Even with the reckless way he walks it was clear that he belongs to the waters. Inns and taverns across the country nicknamed him Hyden, from a hunted down ocean-race of Sovenian folklore since he was "the babe who first learned how to swim before learning how to walk".
Funny enough, the man following him strides in a hood with a face that has outgrown countless of balaclavas. Always at the periphery on the silent street, unnoticed like a white stone on a snowy field unsuspectedly tripping all that crossed him. The only was to know he's there is through a mind-clotting melody he always hums.
Unlike the sailor's hands that were roughened by nets and scarred by blades, his fingers were calloused by pen-hold and burnt by chemicals. The whole nation of Sovenia knows him as well, yet with a bad taste whenever his name leaves their mouth, the last name to be precise:
He is the foster-son of Miriam Blackmercy, making him seen as a criminal's child. But Ian'drah only sees him as Sion, his dearest friend and the best damn alchemist in his eyes- second only to Sion's mum, of course.
They always sail the North-East wind by a rowing sail-boat, a few more distance north the white cliff and they'll reach the the infamous glacial maze. Some rumours tell that through the maze a path exists to the Golden City from the old tales, but all the boatsmen who tested the rumour never came back.
"I might drowse and drown if you don't stop singing." Ian'drah teased his humming friend, broad shoulders relaxed and not a single sweat had broke from minutes of rigorous rowing.
"Feel free to fall, it would be a good way to go and you'll be the talk of town again."
"Baby Tuna, yer' not bothered if I drown and freeze to death?" It is known that those are impossible to happen but he still pouted his lips.
"Snowberry? Apple-plum?" he listed the nicknames, the folks only know his friend as Sion Blackmercy, but he knows well that the prodigal master Alchemist, Miriam, named her son after the breakfast she's having when she found the babe abandoned on the apothecary's doorstep: A dirgean smoked-fish dish- Sovenian Siontuna, mouth-watering if served with local snowberries.
